imagined. 'Thank you for your time, Mrs. Fowler,' he said.
'I wish I could have helped more,' Laura answered.
For some reason, he was short of words. 'I'm sure you did your best,' he said lamely. Then he left, feeling their eyes on his back as he walked away.
*
From a slatted window in the church spire, just above the antique clock, and just a few feet from Siegfried's cramped transmission chamber, a man could see the railroad station. Reverend Fowler found it convenient to be in the spire that afternoon when the train to Philadelphia and Washington departed. He focused a pair of binoculars on the depot, scanned the voyagers assembled, and eventually found the snooping F.B.I. agent.
Fowler kept the glasses carefully on Bill Cochrane. There was nothing about the man that he liked. His presence there. His sharp, penetrating mind. His observance of detail. The way he looked at Laura. The way she looked back at him.
The train pulled into the station and Fowler kept the glasses on the troublemaker. Fowler thought of his wife. His wife was his possession, after all. She might have to be taught a lesson sometime soon. After all, he mused further, with Charlotte gone, Laura would have to fulfill other functions. A man needed a wife and a whore sometimes, Fowler mused wistfully. Laura would have to be both.
The train pulled to a halt at Liberty Circle. The first three cars would transfer at Trenton to an engine and train of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Fowler watched Bill Cochrane carefully and was relieved when the F.B.I. agent boarded the second car. Fowler scanned all the exits until the train pulled out of the station.
Cochrane had not disembarked. He was gone. Fowler placed his binoculars back in their case, content with Cochrane's departure. He was further satisfied that he could travel to New York, himself, later that evening.
Fowler paid no attention at all to three other travelers who disembarked at Liberty Circle. One was a tall dark-haired Englishman in a coat and a bowler. The other two men were younger and more heavyset. They were bareheaded and followed their senior partner. But Siegfried, thinking ahead to his own departure that day, had no way of recognizing Peter Whiteside. Nor did he have any way of guessing his business in Liberty Circle. Nor, in his wildest fantasies, would he have imagined that Whiteside would have brought some M.I. 6 muscle along with him, just for good measure.
THIRTY
Fritz Duquaine, the Boer and Siegfried's onetime spy master, felt like a fool. Twice he had been to St. Paul's by night to leave messages for Fowler. Twice he had urged the stubborn minister to contact him. Protocol forbade a direct meeting anywhere outside of New York. And they had made rendezvous arrangements in the summer. But Fowler, Duquaine cursed, has this fixation: his independence and his self- professed anonymity. Siegfried hadn't made contact for three weeks, since the last signal left in the church.
Duquaine stood before the Sailors' Monument in New York's Battery Park. Beneath his left arm he held an umbrella and an attache case. In his right hand he held a New York Mirror. The weather had turned sharply colder and wind swept in from the harbor. Duquaine was reminded of the docks in Bremen or Cape Town in the winter. Yet another exercise in futility, Duquaine thought. In a raincoat, he was freezing. It was a Tuesday a few minutes after noon. Few other people were in the park. Apparently few New Yorkers enjoyed having their ears turned to ice.
Duquaine walked to a bench near a park exit toward Wall Street. He hunched his shoulders. Even here the wind found him. He cursed Siegfried again and muttered a special oath for all self-styled spies. Someday one of them would get him killed.
What, he wondered, was Siegfried doing that would get direct approval from Hitler? How far could Siegfried have managed to get, seeing how the Gestapo's contact within the F.B.I. had sent out an alarm?
Duquaine lit a cigarette, using three matches within his cupped hands. He glanced at his watch. Twelve minutes past noon. Well, he decided, he wasn't going to freeze more than three more minutes. That was certain. He turned to his left, squinted slightly against the brightness, and eyed the ferry and a British frigate leaving the harbor.
The British, he thought again, thinking back to his own boyhood. Filthiest colonialists in the world. Now at least England was in the war against Hitler. Over the pretext of Polish territorial integrity, of all things! Duquaine wondered whether he would soon be assigned to infiltrate England in advance of the German invasion. It was not without reason. He had relatives up north, toward Sunderland and Edinburgh, and under a colonial guise he could probably get a good look at submarine activity.
Duquaine was in the midst of this thought when he turned quickly and was startled to see Reverend Fowler standing beside him, looking down in the ominous squinting glare that Duquaine had always disliked.
'Daydreaming?' Fowler asked in English.
'Waiting for you and freezing,' said Duquaine. 'And not for the first time.'
'But possibly for the last,' said Fowler. 'Shall we walk?'
'Of course.'
Anything, Duquaine thought, to get moving and get business accomplished. They walked toward Wall Street.
'I am instructed to warn you,' Duquaine began, 'the Federal Bureau of Investigation has picked up your trail. Apparently, they do not know who you are yet, but they may be close.”
'I'm aware of it,' said Fowler flatly.
'There is a particular agent. His name is William Cochrane. He-'
'I'm at least a week ahead of you, Duquaine,' Fowler said. They paused. A policeman walked by and gave them a nod, which they returned. 'I know about the F.B.I. and I know about the agent. I want from you two things. One is the agent's home location. Do you have that for me?'
'I do,' Duquaine said. He gave it and Fowler memorized it.
Then Fowler continued. 'Now, I need an escape route and it must be ready immediately. I assume Berlin has arranged such?'
'Berlin has. You are to travel under a pseudonym. Do you need identity papers, too?'
'Duquaine,' Siegfried responded curtly, 'if I needed papers I would have told you so. I need a route,' he said. 'That is all.'
Duquaine hesitated and held his own temper. 'You are to travel to Mexico City,' he said. 'There is a German Embassy there, as you know. The undersecretary of consular affairs is a Herr Jacquard. You will go to a restaurant called Renato's, which is down the boulevard from the embassy. Do you speak Spanish?'
'Adequately,' Fowler answered.
'Inquire at the bar for Senor Lopez between six and seven on your first evening. The bartender will say that he does not know your name. You will move to the end of the bar and drink. Senor Lopez is Herr Jacquard. He is available each evening for such emergencies. He will find you. Remain ready to travel; have no more than one small suitcase. You will be sent to either Tampico or Veracruz the next day and will leave on whatever German ship is first scheduled out of port. Probably a freighter.'
'A freighter?'
'What did you prefer? The Bismarck? Or perhaps the Fuehrer's personal vessel?'
'Something more than a freighter,' Fowler said acidly. 'What am I? A deckhand? I'm going to keep America out of the war, all by myself.'
'If you are unhappy,' Duquaine replied with evident relish, 'arrange your own passage.'
'What I shall arrange,' said Fowler, stopping and breaking off the conversation, 'is that you will be placed on latrine duty in Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Good day to you Duquaine. You've been of some small help.'
Duquaine held his silence but looked furiously at Fowler. The American, however, turned his back on the South African and walked away.
'Bloody Nazis,' Duquaine mumbled when Fowler was far out of earshot. If he never saw any of them again, it would be too soon. The Nazi true believers were almost as repellent as the English. Then, as Duquaine disappeared toward Worth Street, in search of a Longchamps for lunch, a few of Siegfried's words came back to him.
What had Siegfried meant, 'Keep America out of the war'? Fowler, Duquaine was now convinced, had
